Let's start with some small disclaimer :
When I say I learned hundreds of kanji, there is of course some nuance to it. What I mean by "learn" is "being able to remember the reading and the meaning of at least one word that uses this kanji with little to no effort". Thus, I couldn't say I Master these kanjis I recently learned as much as I know most of the ones I had studied before my challenge. For instance, I know that 桟橋 means something like a pier but I couldn't tell you for sure what nuances does the 桟 character carry (although I'm assuming it's probably something connected to water). You might have also noticed that I say I learned "hundreds" of kanjis without stating the exact number. This is because I basically learned all the kanjis I had left to know for the jlpt n1 and, in my list, there were some that I already knew or that I deemed not that useful ( like 朕). Thus, I can't tell you for sure how many kanjis exactly I was able to memorise in this short time but I would estimate it to be something close to 300. I actually encourage you to test my knowledge and give me some words to read, I'll tell you honestly whether I managed to read/understand them. Right now, I already took three sample N1 reading kanji tests and got perfect scores at two of them and a 9/12 on the other because it featured rare readings of kanjis I though I already knew
Now, why did I do this ? I realised the last characters I had to learn for the N1 were not the kind that I could easily just run into. I knew I could just learn vocab and kanji through immersion but it would be kind of random words so if I wanted to really focus on N1, there was no way but to use some kind of "kanji list". Who knows after how many novels I would have encountered specific words like 嫡子 or 娘婿 ? Besides, I believe that the more kanji you know, the better you are at understanding new vocab cause you'll recognise the characters and their meaning so it'll be less challenging than if it was something completely new. Therefore, I perused through a kanji list and each time there was one I did not know, I would look it up on jisho. If it had only one useful reading, I would put that one but if there were more, I put all of them.
In the end, I would say this was a fun but exhausting experience. I almost burned out many times and it was very time consuming. However, I feel like it's already helping my Japanese immersion ability. Cause now I know that if something is written in Japanese, it is extremely likely that I will be able to read it and rather likely that I will understand. Now, I wouldn't recommend this kind of kanji speedrun to everyone for the following reasons : 1 It is extremely exhausting and definitely not sustainable 2 You can't do it if you are a beginner because it requires a deep understanding of how kanjis work and also beginner kanjis tend to have wider meaning 3 Kind of obvious but you need to have an excellent memory
by GibonDuGigroin